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Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney MBE (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer. With John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, he gained worldwide fame as a member of the Beatles, one of the most popular and influential groups in the history of pop music; his songwriting partnership with Lennon is one of the most celebrated of the 20th century. After the band's break-up, he pursued a solo career and formed Wings with his first wife, Linda, and Denny Laine. McCartney has been recognised as one of the most successful composers and performers of all time, with 60 gold discs and sales of over 100 million albums and 100 million singles of his work with the Beatles and as a solo artist. More than 2,200 artists have covered his Beatles song "Yesterday", more than any other copyrighted song in history. Wings' 1977 release "Mull of Kintyre" is one of the all-time best-selling singles in the UK. A two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as a member of The Beatles in 1988, and as a solo artist in 1999), and a 21-time Grammy Award winner (having won both individually and with the Beatles), McCartney has written, or co-written 32 songs that have reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and as of 2014 he has sold more than 15.5 million RIAA-certified units in the United States. McCartney, Lennon, Harrison and Starr received MBEs in 1965, and in 1997, McCartney was knighted for his services to music. Links To Peel Peel often told of how his Liverpool origins helped him get a job on radio station KLIF as a "Beatles expert", while living in Dallas duirng the height of Beatlemania in 1963-4. According to the TV Cream website, Peel was able to do this by "pretending to be Paul McCartney’s drinking buddy" http://tv.cream.org/specialreport/peel/. Lennon and McCartney's songwriting was at its peak when Peel returned to Britain in 1967, and the LP Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was an inspiration for the Perfumed Garden. On one Radio London show the DJ dedicated a track to "the prophet Paul", which may have referred to McCartney's admission that he had taken LSD, or to his support for London's hippy underground. It was Paul who provided funds to keep International Times going when the paper was faced with financial problems and police harassment. Throughout the late 1960s Peel retained his high opinion of the Beatles, playing their new records as they appeared, and after the band split up in 1970 their solo records also featured in his playlists, especially Paul's solo albums and Wings' musical outputs. In Margrave of the Marshes (p. 216) Sheila Ravenscroft recounts how she was excited to meet McCartney when she and Peel attended one of WIngs' early college gigs in 1972 ("I was one of those girls you see in newsreel footage from Beatles gigs, screaming my lungs out....") However, Peel and Sheila never became friends with Paul and Linda in the way that they did with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and by the late 1970's, when punk was becoming influential, Peel lost interest in McCartney's solo career and rarely played any of his music. It seems that Paul bore Peel no malice for this, as borne out by a casual encounter in the 1990s: "Strange thing happened to me on the way to the studio. Walking along from the west end of London, walking across the road, and a car that had stopped at the traffic light, window rolled down, sort of vaguely Liverpool voice shouting out of it, "Hey John Peel! I've got a bone to pick with you!," and you think, I know what this is. It's some loser bass player from a Liverpool blues band of 1972, something like that, "I sent you a demo tape and you never wrote back. You could've written back. Who do you think you are?" So the voice was shouting away, and I was thinking, how do I get away from this. I had another look at the bloke in the car, there was a blonde woman sitting in the passenger seat: Paul McCartney was who it was! Being amiable, not being hostile at all, as it turned out. He said, "Any more of this and I'll send you back to Liverpool!", and I have to say, frankly Paul, I wouldn't mind that to be perfectly honest with you. Just letting you know that I'm recognised by the stars." http://peel.wikia.com/wiki/24_April_1997_(BFBS) Paul McCartney was among the "stars" who paid tribute to Peel when the DJ died in 2004 ref.. Shows Played ;1971 *28 August 1971 (& Linda McCartney): Monkberry Moon Delight ;1973 *18 December 1973: 'Jet (LP-Band On The Run)' (Apple/Emi) ;1976 *20 August 1976: 'Band On the Run / Jet (LP-Band On The Run)' (Apple) ;1987 *25 December 1987: Wonderful Christmas Time ;2000 *05 July 2000 (vs Super Furry Animals): Free Now (white label) Top Of The Pops *25 December 1982 (TOTP): Ebony & Ivory (with Stevie Wonder) *22 December 1983 (TOTP): Pipes Of Peace *05 January 1984 (TOTP): Coming Up *03 January 1985 (TOTP): (JP: “Staying at No.3 in our Top 10 rundown, a bit of quality – “We All Stand Together”) ''We All Stand Together *02 January 1986 (TOTP): ''(JP: 'Next, we got Paul McCartney in a entirely frog free environment') Spies Like Us See Also * Singles Reviews External Links * Wikipedia * Discogs * Official Website Category:Artists